Henry III Fine Rolls: Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Scarboough Castle’

Henry spent all this week at Windsor. Bad news kept pouring in. We have seen from last week’s blog, that the sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire was losing control of his counties. A letter arrived from the stalwart, James of Audley, revealing a similar situation in Shropshire and Staffordshire. In the north, Hugh Bigod, having tamely surrendered Dover to the king earlier in the year, now refused to give up Scarborough. He was, he declared, under oath not to surrendered it ‘without the will and express order of the king and his magnates’. This showed he was still recognising the authority of the council of magnates imposed on the king in 1258. And then intelligence arrived that Simon de Montfort had gone to France. Henry said he did not know why, but must have feared that the earl’s aim was to replace the military force Henry hoped to raise abroad with one of his own. On Friday 2 September, Henry wrote accordingly to King Louis: please don’t believe what Montfort tells you, and please prevent him from acting to my prejudice ‘in the affair between us and our barons’.

The fine rolls themselves shed an interesting light on the situation. In this week no less than thirty-six writs were purchased to commence or expedite the common law legal actions. None, however, were purchased from Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex, which may well reflect the situation in those counties. Equally there were none from Audley’s Shropshire and Staffordshire, and Matthias Bezill’s Gloucestershire (for which see last week’s blog.) On the other hand, thirty-six writs purchased in all was not a bad total. People were still willing and able to come to Windsor, and had confidence that the legal actions they were pursuing were not going to be engulfed in a civil war. This may help explain why Henry had felt able to return to Windsor, and why he continued to put his trust in conciliation as much as confrontation. He thus counselled James of Audley to behave with caution and pass over mere verbal resistance. He should only act otherwise if there was violent resistance to the king’s officers. Henry also sent an envoy to Norfolk and Suffolk to explain the affection and benevolence he felt for everyone in the two counties. The claims of malevolent people that he intended to subvert their rights and liberties were completely false. See next week’s instalment.